Somehow this art project got out of my rotation. This is one of the rare art projects that I came up with on my own, and it was fun to teach it again.

We thought of an emoji that we wished we could use that didn’t exist…until now.

Once we thought of our new emoji (either completely new design or a combo of 2 emojis that don’t exist yet), we sketched out our ideas and colored our sketches with regular markers on paper.

Next we taped our sketches to a six inch sheet of aluminum and re-drew the lines of our design over the layer of colored sketch paper over aluminum. We completed our layer by putting a magazine under it all so the lines could have a little cushion to get deeper. (Layer from the top – drawing taped to aluminum placed on magazine)

Once we finished taping our sketches to aluminum and re-drawing our lines with a pencil once with a magazine underneath, we took the paper sketches off the aluminum and re-drew over the lines one more time to make them deeper. I wish this part could be skipped – kinda boring to keep re-drawing your drawing – but I don’t know of a faster way to still get the gorgeous low relief engraved lines. Please let me know if you have any ideas!

Then we added colors onto the engraved aluminum with Sharpies.

The completed emojis were cut out and glued onto cardboard. It always surprises the students that you cut aluminum sheeting almost the same way with the same type of scissors as cutting paper.

Most of the students were happy with their completed aluminum emojis.

I’m very happy with our creative artists!